Betlts...
Unstable Frames: Christian S. Hammons on Culture, Gender, and the Cinematic Gaze
This piece explores how narrative and documentary films function as sites of gendered cultural negotiation. Drawing on Judith Butler’s performativity and Trinh T. Minh-ha’s reflexive ethnography, I argue that cinema both reproduces and subverts dominant cultural inscriptions of gender. Through close analyses of three films— Tomboy (Sciamma, 2011), The Orchid Seller (fictive case study), and Paris Is Burning (Livingston, 1990)—I demonstrate how the medium’s temporal and spatial grammars can destabilize binary frameworks. Ultimately, I propose a transcultural spectatorship model wherein viewers learn to read gender as a local, contested performance rather than a universal essence. Introduction: The Cinematic Double Bind Unstable Frames: Christian S
Film does not merely reflect culture; it frames it—literally and ideologically. Each shot selects, each edit naturalizes. For scholars of gender, this framing power poses a double bind. On one hand, mainstream cinema has historically disciplined bodies into legible masculine/feminine roles, often along colonial or heteronormative lines. On the other, independent and transnational filmmakers have weaponized the same medium to expose those seams. My work asks: How can we read gender in film not as a stable identity but as a site of cultural friction ? Minh-ha’s reflexive ethnography, I argue that cinema both
No film better illustrates the instability of cultural–gender framing than Paris Is Burning (Livingston, 1990). The documentary’s history of appropriation and celebration is well-trodden. But less discussed is how its formal structure mirrors ballroom’s own subversion. Livingston repeatedly cuts between voguing performances and “real life” interviews. In one sequence, Pepper LaBeija explains “reading” as verbal combat; immediately, we see a ballroom reading session where gender is temporarily legislated by queer Black and Latinx judges. The film refuses to resolve the tension: Is ballroom an escape from gendered oppression or a hyper-real staging of its rules? The answer is both —and cinema’s ability to hold that contradiction is its gift. Introduction: The Cinematic Double Bind Film does not